


Violet Doldrums

by nolandsman



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Gen, NPC perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2016-01-08
Packaged: 2018-05-01 20:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5219756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nolandsman/pseuds/nolandsman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the second inexplicable natural disaster that week. No one knew why the world was ending, or how, but it was. Blind, ignorant, all that's left for the populace to do is come to terms with the inevitable. A tale from the point of view of an NPC who is forced to watch as his world, thanks to our heroes, crumbles to pieces around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1

The sound of cheering erupted in periodic spouts from the deck of the ship, drunken cries of delight echoing across the black water. The cool wind beat gently in the open sails, and the ship glided along the water like a blade on ice—smoothly, quickly. The boat's easy passage was swift, and other than the continuous cries of celebration, silent.

Aifread leaned over the forecastle railing, staring into the water. Between his fingers dangled a gold chain, a ruby glinting from its end in the clear starlight. His uncharacteristic pensiveness drew the attention of a blasted shipmate, who stumbled over to him, sloshing a bottle of premium Palmacostan whisky.

In a stilted, desperate attempt at coherent speech, the shipmate asked him what he was staring at. From what Aifread could translate, he was asking him why he took the time to stare off meditatively into the distant sky instead of celebrating with the rest of them.

"I don't know," he replied, well aware that whatever excuse he could come up with would soar over the man's head like a flying fish over the water. The man, suddenly bored with harassing Aifread, stumbled back down the stairs to the gun deck, where a lively song was being strummed up by the wasted chantyman.

Everyone on the ship was singing wildly. It had been smooth sailing, especially in the last couple of days. Even after the near-complete destruction of Palmacosta, the sea's oldest and most notorious tradesmen had rebounded, nearly ebulliently, ready to take advantage of the chaos. Price gouging, looting, ransoming… you name it. And Aifread would've been wholeheartedly at the forefront of such lucrative endeavors had his entire ship and crew not been destroyed before his eyes with one fell swoop of a violent tree root.

Palmacosta generally prepared itself quite well for emergencies: hurricanes, fires, plagues, and all manner of the usual disasters. This cataclysm, however, was wholly unprecedented, unanticipated, and unmanageable. Half the city was under water, the other half torn to shreds by what seemed to be the malicious roots of a giant tree, impossible to burn, with bark harder than rock.

No one knew where the tree had sprouted from. Some said it was a god, an ancient, evil god, jealous of the people's devotion to Martel, revitalized and out for revenge. Others said it had come from another world, and after having depleted its homeland's mana completely, it was now going to suck the sustenance out of Sylvarant like a botanic cannibal. Yet others insisted the tree was an ancient entity that had been hibernating for years, ready to spring to life when given the chance. They were insane, all of them. All the stories, all the people. Insane with grief and fear.

Whatever the ancient horror was, it had taken everything from Aifread. He had watched the harbor splinter like kindling under the massive tendrils of the giant tree, he had watched his livelihood, his comrades, sink under the water in an otherworldly blur. There was no time to act, there wasn't even enough time to truly understand what was happening. He had run, as any sane man would, and miraculously, he had lived. Many others had not been so lucky.

What remained of the city was barely recognizable. By the time the calamity had passed, and the townspeople had regained their senses, few walls were still standing. The harbor had sunk into the foaming grey sea, and the town square was nothing but a pile of rubble, crushed like a clod of soft dirt between the fingers of the giant tree.

Some people had tried to chop those roots and branches, to rebuild, to at least light fires and warm themselves, but it had proved impossible. The tree was invincible, immovable. Those rich enough to afford an escape left the city immediately, those too poor to escape either died or barely scraped by, looting emergency stashes and eating whatever dead sea animals came floating into the remains of the harbor.

In the days and weeks after the disaster, those whose possessions had survived returned to reclaim them. They took their gold, heirlooms, art and anything of value with them on their carriages, toward the north. Others boxed up their remaining treasures and sent them afloat on the ocean toward Luin.

Rumor had it that where Palmacosta had fallen, Luin had risen. The city of water had become the city of rebirth, and there was no better place for the displaced Palmacostan upper class to go. There was safety to the north—safety and the chance for a new start. The rich loaded all their heirlooms and valuables onto any surviving ships and sent them to the newly reborn colony, either accompanying their treasures or making their way to Luin over land.

It was one of these vessels that Aifread's party had managed to overtake and rob. They had hauled over whatever gold they could onto their own ship and sunk that creaking liner, not bothering to take any prisoners.

Aifread watched the ship sink into the depths of the sea, her crew either going down with her flaming hull or taking their chances by jumping into the dark water. He watched them flail in the foam, screaming for help or mercy, but Aifread could not tell if they were appealing to their gods or to the very pirates that had sunk them. He had felt very little guilt—after all, coldness was a necessary trait of his occupation—but he had not been able to banish the worry that had planted itself in his gut at that moment.

He nursed that worry all the way to nightfall. When the others had opened the bottles of fancy, aged whisky taken from the stores of wealth aboard the northbound ship, when they had rolled in the treasures and fine silks they had pilfered, Aifread separated himself from the revelry.

He wondered why he was so morose this particular evening. He had taken his share of the loot, which was generous, considering his station. He was no longer captain of his own ship, and had entered the lowest rung of the hierarchy of this one, so he had expected to get less than he usually did. His meager share was still enough to make his heart sing. That was not what was picking at his insides and ruining his night.

He must be mourning the comrades of his old boat—or perhaps more likely, mourning the boat itself. It had been a small but fast vessel, manned by a reasonably skilled crew. He was making a good living, he had a girl in every port, even one that kept sending him letter after letter that he never opened… he'd had it good then, and considering the circumstances, he had it good now.

So he wondered why he did not feel the need to go down to the gun deck and join his comrades in song. The chantyman on this vessel had a knack for pulling wonderful ditties out of thin air, and coaxing as they were, Aifread preferred to stare at the stars. For some reason, he felt like this might be the last chance he had to look at them.

His instinct turned out to be reliable, as always. The next day, when he emerged from belowdecks, in place of the usual sky streaked with blues and grey loomed a shadowy purple haze.

The sun was missing. The wind was gone. The currents had stilled. The ocean and sky had been swallowed whole by the unfamiliar violet glow.

The crew began to panic.


	2. Days 2-3

There was little work done on the ship the next day. There was little that _could_ be done, given that the currents and the wind had both died so suddenly. The crew spent hours simply sitting and staring at the strangely magnificent purple sky, slowly sobering themselves.

Despite all its beauty, no sailors took the omen as a good one. Any phenomenon that stole the blessing of motion from them was something evil. And given the world's recently acquired proclivity of churning out natural disasters, they began to wonder whether or not this strange weather was connected in any way to the giant tree that had burst from nowhere, seemingly with the only purpose of destroying Palmacosta.

"You know, how every generation, they say the world's gonna end?" said a particularly pensive sailor slouching beside Aifread. He tried to remember this guy's name. It was Eric, or something forgettable like that. "You know how every off-kilter preacher of Martel would say 'no, no, it's _this_ year that it's all gonna go to hell!' I never believed them. But goddammit, one of them was right."

"Well," Aifread started, "if you say 'This is the end' so many times, you're going to be right eventually. Only once, but eventually."

The other pirate laughed. "I ain't a math man, but that seems like a solid statistic." He stayed quiet for a little while before continuing. "I wonder what we did."

"What we did?"

"You know, to make the gods angry. Whatever god it is that has these sorts of low tricks up his sleeve. 'Cause certain it ain't the work of Martel."

Aifread's gold necklace, the one he'd been idly toying with the night before, again hung from his fingers. When he was ill at ease he liked to have something to do with his hands. "I don't think we did anything. Sometimes natural shit happens."

"Bollocks, 'Fread, this ain't natural at all. Look at that sky. What do you even reckon it is?"

"Miasma?" Aifread had heard stories of poisonous gasses contained in the depths of the world, but he had never encountered it. He wondered if it looked like this—hazy, violet, strangely breathable.

"Nah. It ain't that. It looks like the sky just… left. There's only that purple shit left behind. It's too far away to be miasma."

"Well, whatever it is, it's going to make navigating a pain in the ass."

The crew considered sweeping out the oars and trying to make it back to land, but the idea was eventually discarded. The southerly Sylvaranti winds had always been so reliably consistent, and the weather so clement for so many years, no passage from Palmacosta to Luin had ever necessitated the use of oars. The oars on the _Serpent_ hadn't been used since their conception and were in a state of hideous disrepair. Aifread's old ship, the _Van Eltia_ , bless her sunken heart, hadn't even had any.

According to the navigator, with the equipment and manpower they had now, they wouldn't make it back to land before the food and water ran out. They could take a chance to starve, or wait for the wind to pick up. After all, the last disaster had lasted comparatively shortly, with the angry tree's roots settling down and creaking to a halt within an hour. It was only a matter of time before the wind picked up and they would sail as swiftly as they had before, all the way to Luin to spend their hard-earned loot.

They decided to wait for two days. If whatever wind graced their sails had not delivered them from these strange doldrums by then, they would turn to other measures. It was the sign of a decent seaman to be able to improvise when it came down to it—that's what kept you alive long enough to build a reputation.

Work was easy. There was little sailing to be done in the first two days, so there wasn't anything to distract the crew from their newly acquired booty. The chanty man strummed up ditties of joy and hope while the rest of the crew unpacked the cases of liquor they had lifted the previous day.

They drank their way through the usual top-shelf Palmacostan whisky, bottles of red wine that had aged delicately in the basements of noblemen's mansions, jars of ale, mead, even a bottle of absinthe that looked to be over a hundred years old. With the help of all these new devices, the seamen drank themselves so blind they could no longer see the purple sky hovering low above them. It was probably for the best that they were blind to the event that they all somehow knew would eventually destroy them.

With every swig, Aifread looked up to the sky and asked that if it had to fall, if it could at least wait until he was drunk enough not to notice. He seemed to be lagging pathetically behind his compatriots, who had dug into the cases like there was no tomorrow. Well, as far as they knew, there might not be a tomorrow, so Aifread could not blame them.

One particularly drunk sailor, who often found himself in this state, hit the bottle harder than the rest. By nightfall, he was heaving over the side of the ship so violently he simply passed out on the rail from sheer exhaustion brought on by this episode.

It wasn't until he had already drowned that any of them had even noticed that he had fallen overboard. They all knew that when he took trips to the side of the ship to wrench and squirm and vomit, he preferred to be left alone. He had snapped at enough of the crew during his time of vulnerability that they all knew just to let him slink off into the darkness and do his business. He always returned in a few minutes, a renewed man, eager to continue with the libations. It seemed like he enjoyed celebrating surviving his incurable alcoholism with a drink or two, and as long as he kept to his own share of grog, none of the other sailors cared. If he wanted to waste his alcoholic fare over the side of the ship, so be it. As long as he awoke in a state the next day to do his fair share of the work.

But he didn't return that night. Nobody noticed for a while, until Aifread decided to point out how quiet it had become on deck without that particular man lumbering around, talking to each and every person, trying to start a game of cards or a pissing contest. For Aifread, it was a relief, but for some of the bolder members of the crew, it was a sign that the party was dying out. At this juncture in the journey, where there was no sailing to be done and the only distraction from alcohol they had was the massive violet suggestion of their impending deaths, none of them were fond of the idea of the party ending. So a few went out to look for the drunkard, hoping to find him sprawled over at the forecastle, snoring, where they had last glimpsed him. They could find him nowhere. The smears of his vomit on the railing left the clues they all needed to assume that he had simply slipped off into the water.

Whether or not he awoke upon hitting the surface, nobody knew, but they all liked to think he was far too drunk to notice his own death. That, Aifread thought, was a comforting idea for all of them. By the time the morning came, dark and stained a dismal purple, the crew had sobered, both physically and emotionally. Day and night seemed a little too eerily similar, and some of the crew agreed it was better for the poor drunk that he had slipped away quietly into death before the calamity of the purple sky came falling down on them.

There was no celebration, nor was there any mourning upon his death. He had no particularly close friends on that crew, and he meant nothing to Aifread. They divided his possessions among themselves and got back to work. The navigator, a heavily religious woman, did a quick and half-hearted death ritual for the deceased. She, usually quite devoted to her spiritual tasks, had been so discouraged by the recent natural developments, she couldn't even perform a simple ritual right.

Few of the crew were religious, but those that adhered to Martel's teachings confessed a shared feeling that the dead man's soul had not been properly sent off. They worried that he would wander forever in the purple wasteland the sea had suddenly turned into. But they didn't worry for more than an hour or so, since they were needed on deck to take in the sails and sweep out the oars. The two-day celebration—if you could call it that—was over, and the galley oars dipped into the sea listlessly, like useless, long wooden fingertips, testing the purple water.

The first casualty of the odd calamity went unspoken after that, slipping into the realm of the forgotten.


	3. Days 4-9

The only movement on the vast, dead sea was the languorous ripples the _Serpent_ left in its wake. The oars lowered slowly, weakly, into the thick water, propelling the ship torturously forward across the featureless ocean.

The men on the other end of the oars were sore, exhausted, on the brink of defeat. If not for the energetic first mate stumbling along their ranks in a state of eternal pep-talk, they would've no doubt all collapsed with hopelessness in the shadowy hull, letting the oars to slide into the dark water and float away.

Aifread remained ambivalent about whether or not it would be a mercy to just give up and let the listless sea swallow the ship whole. When he finished his turn at the oars, massaging his arms and wiping sweat off his brow, he considered the possibility of them sinking their own ship. As a seaman, Aifread had always had to occupy himself with the possible ways to die in the salty wilderness.

Every Palmacostan sailor has wrestled with the consequences of his trade. The first time Aifread had set foot on a ship, when his tenth birthday was still a few religious holidays into the future, he had awoken to the possibility—the near-guaranteed possibility—that he would die at sea. Someday, in some way or another, the ocean would claim his life. It was his responsibility to ensure that he did not let his happen too soon—to himself nor to his comrades.

Of course, piracy afforded a little more freedom when it came to taking care of one's mates. One was not expected to perform any miracles, but generally when the need to rescue a fellow seafarer came up, even pirates would rise to the occasion.

There were rules on every ship, after all. Transgressions were met with a swift and apt punishment, ending, inevitably, with a burial at sea. When Aifread made the slow yet unnoticeable transition from law-abiding sailor to roving corsair, he learned that in this trade, life was not sacred. Regardless of what the Martellian navigator said, Aifread had no doubt she knew this as well.

So deciding precisely how to die on a ship was an activity that occupied Aifread's—and allegedly, every other sailor's—mind, when they could afford to think. The small hours of the morning, when one would awaken in his hammock with a roaring pain in his heart, or in moments of quiet rest, in a state of drunken stupor, and, of course, when one was confronted with endless, windless doldrums.

Aifread crossed his arms as he ascended to the deck, shaking beads of sweat from his hair. He could, of course, merely jump overboard and join the drunkard who had fallen just the night before. He could pretend to plot a mutiny, and then the crew would do him the favor of tying his hands and knocking him out before shoving him into the water—that way, he could at least die quickly. He thought perhaps he should avoid drowning, but felt like that may be the only proper way for a sea rover like him to make it to the next world.

His desire to end quickly did not completely overpower his desire to keep on living, so Aifread decided for the time being he'd search for something to eat. Their food stores were steadily dwindling, the barrels of fresh water drying up quicker than they had expected, since many members of the crew were sweating away all their moisture down in the galley. Some of the crew had taken the rationing initiative, doling out food and water only after one had finished a certain number of hours in the galley.

"It was a bad idea in the first place." Aifread turned to see the navigator standing behind him. Her frown was thin and weak, her eyes red with worry. Her wan fingers anxiously played with the omnipresent Maretllian talisman that hung from a thick chain around her neck.

"What was a bad idea?" Aifread asked as he walked with her down to the messdeck. She had been exempt from the labor in the galley since she had to figure out where the hell they were rowing in the first place. She was often seen at the bow, sextant and compass in hand, trying to divine where they were. It was no doubt difficult work, with nothing but a haze of violet to navigate by.

"Rowing was a bad idea. We're not going to get to land before we run out of supplies. At least at this rate." Her downcast eyes followed the slight curve of the creaky steps. When they arrived at their destination, they managed to pilfer a few dried fruits and a slab of cured meat. They sat across from one another with tacit agreement to share the valuable foodstuff. She broke the fruit and slid it over the dusty table to him.

"What do you think of all this?" he asked. "I mean, you used to be an acolyte, right? You know all sorts of stuff about Martel. Tell me why she would do something like this."

The woman seemed fascinated with her meager meal all of a sudden. "That's the thing—that's why I _used_ to be an acolyte."

"But you still carry around that chain."

She closed her eyes, defeated. "You're going to ask why Martel has seen fit to punish us so."

Aifread didn't even need to nod.

"All mortals ask this question. Why the gods have done this, why they have done that. The truth is, we don't know. We'll never know." She lifted her red eyes, weary with worry. "That's why they're gods."

"That's a shit answer," Aifread said, stuffing his mouth with what remained of their rations.

The navigator only shrugged. Aifread knew he should never have addressed an officer with such disrespect, but the hierarchal rules of the ship had loosened somewhat in recent days. Even the captain was remiss in his duties, choosing to spend long hours locked up in his cabin and leaving the actual governance of the ship to the stern but optimistic first mate.

Aifread shoved his hands in his pockets and walked up the rickety stairs to the upper deck. He stared up at the purple mist swirling in the darkening sky, and came to a conclusion that he would never escape.

If Martel had done this, she was evil. She was a vengeful, evil bitch and deserved to be stripped of her godhood. But if she hadn't… then she was weak. She couldn't stop whatever malevolent deity was responsible for this catastrophe. If she did exist, she must be wrestling with a stronger, far more brutal god for the fate of the world.

Or… perhaps this was not the will of the gods at all. Perhaps it was just the weather.

Aifread laughed.

Just the weather.

*

The men were weak. The oars dipped into the water languidly, providing more drag than propulsion. To Aifread, there seemed to be little point in forcing them to sit in the galley for hours, sweating away what little water they had left. They knew they were getting nowhere—none of them needed the navigator to tell them that much.

Still, she stood at the helm, instruments glinting dully in the oppressive violet light, eyes narrowed at the featureless distance. She did not move for hours at a time, except to help the men throw their recently acquired treasures overboard.

They did not accept the decision lightly. When the captain emerged from his cabin and ordered them to discard all their gold, all the jewels, all the cutlery and extra ammunition, a riotous din overtook the heavy, ubiquitous silence. Men yelled, cried out, laughed at the absurdity of the command. But eventually, the promise of a speedy return to land overwhelmed their own greed. They could either live poor or die rich, and they chose to live.

After all, the only thing a pirate values more than gold is his own life. It seemed to Aifread fear was a far more powerful motivator than desire.

*

The lightened load barely helped. The ship still crawled along at an agonizing pace, going nowhere. Aifread did not know if it was because the men were somber and enervated now that their gold was somewhere at the bottom of the sea, or if the treasures were not significantly heavy enough to have slowed them down in the first place. Either way, the outcome was the same. They still barely slipped along the surface of the water, like a piece of driftwood through thick brine.

At night, when the men rested, the chantyman strummed up a song. They had not heard a joyful tune for days now, and Aifread tried his best to shut out the disconsolate wailing of the histrionic musician. The silence of the ship and the stillness of the crew did not help him. No matter where he went, the dirges and threnodies followed him, echoing across the deck, the sky, the empty water still as stone.

Someone up top decided to put an end to the mellifluous requiems. One of the riggers, a dark, broad man whose skin seemed to be made entirely of scars and tattoos, stood up, cracking his knuckles.

"You quit those goddamn death marches. They're drivin' me nuts."

The chantyman, refusing to acknowledge his own poor taste, drew his instrument closer to him and only played louder. The rigger advanced on him, raising his fists, and set on the smaller man in a fury.

It took three people to pull him off the chantyman. By that time, the rigger had already broken his nose, so he slinked back into the depths of the ship, strings in tow. The night was quiet after that.

It seemed to be getting hotter, so Aifread slept up on deck instead of the stuffy hammocks of the berth. No one cared—as long as he could sleep enough to do his fair share of rowing tomorrow.

When Aifread awoke, it was to the lookout screaming at the top of his lungs that he had found land.


	4. Days 10-14

The  _Serpent_  was in an uproar. People spilled from the innards of the ship, stumbling on deck to the hopeful call of the lookout. They lined up along the starboard side, nearly tripping into the water in their excitement. The navigator pushed to the forefront, eyes shining brightly.

It was her face that fell the quickest, the hardest. When the rest of the crew heaved a gargantuan sigh in one collective breath, the navigator remained silent. She closed her eyes, expressionless, pale face glowing periwinkle in the oppressive shadow of the calamity.

The dark smear the lookout had mistaken for a spit of land lingered on the horizon. It floated above the water, mast swaying, sails furled, unmoving. Aifread pulled out his spyglass and squinted through it, trying to make out any movement on the ship's deck, but he saw only the drifting purple shadows of the miasmic air.

The navigator turned and retreated into the galley without a word. The first mate immediately took her place among the crew, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. A grin on his wide, pale face, he threw his arms up, issuing orders to approach the craft. When the  _Serpent_  again crawled along the still surface of the water, the first mate stood at the fore, feet nearly on the figurehead, glowing with hope.

The scarred and tattooed rigger suggested that they throw the lookout overboard for his mistake. The first mate laughed at the joke, but the rigger stayed still, eyes narrowed, muscular arms crossed. His unsmiling face told enough. There were more than a few sailors who adopted the same expression—having ones hopes lifted and dashed can do that to a man's otherwise calm and contented face.

But nobody actually made a move to kill the lookout, so the first mate held his ground at the bow, and the rigger went back to work. Aifread figured the lookout would have to watch his back for a little while.

The oars swept out over the water once more, pushing the  _Serpent_  to the still, silent craft that lingered on the horizon.

Aifread could not tell how long it took to approach the other ship. It seemed like days, but it could've been hours, minutes… perhaps weeks. When the  _Serpent_  floated up to the other vessel, Aifread squinted and leaned over the railing.

The craft was a passenger liner, with large windows and an ornate figurehead. Bright, floral letters on the side marked her as the  _Rosy Mariner_ , a craft that had set sail mere days before the  _Serpent_ , carrying the richest members of the Palmacostan aristocracy to safety.

The young sailor known as Eric appeared beside Aifread. "Well, now's our chance to refill our pockets," he said, smiling widely.

"Doubt it," Aifread replied. When the shapes and contours of the  _Rosy Mariner_  became clearer in the purple light, he saw the ship had been abandoned. No crew members scurried along her deck, nor sat idly by waiting for the rescue.

"It looks like they made a break for shore," Eric said, pointing to the empty air where the ship's boats seemed to belong.

"You think they made it?" Aifread asked.

"Nope."

The first mate scurried along their ranks, ordering a raid. The crew, recently so languid, perked up and prepared for boarding. A plank was run out between the two ships and the crew sauntered over to the  _Rosy Mariner_ , laughing and chatting on the way.

Eric stepped down beside Aifread and looked around. "You reckon they left anyone behind?"

"Could be. In which case we'll just have an extra snack."

Eric laughed and followed Aifread across the quarterdeck. The first mate took some men down into the bowels of the ship to scavenge for whatever food remained. Aifread would've preferred to raid the captain's quarters and see what valuables were left behind, but they had all been expressly forbidden to bring anything other than necessities aboard the  _Serpent_.

And there were plenty of necessities to carry. It looked like the passengers and crew of the vessel had grabbed whatever they could fit on their boats and made a break for shore—which left the majority of their supply sitting in the hull, waiting to rot.

Even with the crew's surge of hopeful energy, it took them half a day to carry the food and supplies on board the  _Serpent_. So it had given the navigator a lot of time to think about the future of the voyage, and herself, alone in her cabin.

When one of the swab boys returned from belowdecks screaming nonsense, they were all a little too preoccupied with their own sudden influx of supplies to pay much attention to him. It was nearly a half hour before he managed to drag one of the gunners down to show him what he had found.

The gunner returned with sobering news. For the better part of the day, the navigator had been splattered across one end of her cabin, an old pistol still gripped in her cold hand. No one had heard the shot, and no one had noticed the smell.

"You'd think if anyone knew whether or not we'd make it back to land, it'd be her," Eric said as they pulled her body up from the galley and shoved it over the side of the ship. One of the gunners surreptitiously pocketed her pistol while was at it, but Aifread said nothing.

"So I guess she thought we wouldn't." Aifread crossed his arms. "Even with our renewed supplies."

The swab boy who had found her was tasked with saying a Martellian prayer over her body. He insisted he didn't know any, so it appeared that he made one up. He stuttered, tripping over his words, clutching her old religious chain to his chest as he spoke. When he finished, he threw the chain over the  _Serpent_ 's side, perhaps intending for it to accompany her into the afterlife. It sank below her floating body, down to the bottom of the sea.

"Hey, it's not all bad," Eris whispered. "We can make a decent living this way. Floating along the sea, robbing abandoned ships of their goods, never touching land."

"That's a fast track to becoming a bona fide ghost ship," Aifread said. He couldn't say he would have been disappointed with the gig. As a child he'd always been a fan of horrifying stories of spectral, shadowy liners that glided silently along the dark water, cutting down all in their path.

"We could just keep it up until this fiasco is over," Eric suggested. "Build a name for ourselves."

"That's assuming this whole…" Aifread gestured at the purple, windless sky. "This whole thing ends at all."

Eric pursed his lips and leaned out over the sea, watching the body of the navigator float away. "It'll end in some way or another."

*

Late at night, Aifread sat in his hammock, fingers tracing the edges of envelopes. He stacked the letters—dozens of them—on his chest the way a sea otter cradles a mussel before cracking it open and sucking out the insides. The possibility of opening the letters and reading the contents passed through his mind with little consideration.

The ship had run out of wax and oil days ago, so there were no lamps by which he could read. Even the moon and starlight had been blotted out by the ubiquitous calamity in the firmament. He lay in utter darkness, feeling the edges of the letters. Even if day broke, he would still remain blind to their contents.

He didn't know how the woman always managed to get a letter to him. Sometimes, when he was not stealthy enough to avoid her in Izoold, she would give them to him herself. Since she had an uncanny way of intuiting when he'd arrive, she would more often than not be waiting for him at the edge of the dock, short, red hair blowing furiously in the wind. He had learned to avoid Izoold.

But she would find him. She would always send a message through one sailor or another. Sometimes the letters passed through as many as five or six people before they made their way to Aifread. By that time, whatever gifts or money she had included in the packages had been pilfered, and often he would get nothing but a crumpled, dirty, limitlessly resealed envelope from the knobby fingers of some stranger or another.

He had never read any of them. The letters that she would hand him herself would often include gifts of a few hundred gald—these ones he appreciated, but not enough to make his way back to Izoold on a regular basis. He would take the money with a smile, imply that he needed more, and then put the letter in his breast pocket—so she would see him place it close to his heart.

Why he kept all of them, he had no idea. It struck him as odd that he hadn't thrown them into the sea. Perhaps he kept them because he was an ardent collector of things—feathers, beads, gold, experiences. But all those were treasures. The letters, no matter how he looked at it, were utterly worthless.

Still, he kept them with him, in the event that he might want to read them. If they did not find land soon, it was possible he'd be stuck on this ship for a very, very long time. Perhaps longer than he initially considered. If Eric was right, and they could adopt the mantle of ghost ship, pilfering supplies from any other vessel they came across, they could survive for weeks, months, perhaps even years. Maybe, sometime in the future, when half the crew were ghosts and Aifread was grizzled and almost dead himself, he might reach into his pocket and rediscover these letters. Maybe then, they would provide some reading material. But for now, the envelopes were only shapes in the dark, folded and geometrical and uninteresting.

So Aifread slipped them back into his pocket and turned over, thinking of the redheaded woman staring out her window back in Izoold, eyes locked on the grey horizon, waiting the inevitable return of the  _Van Eltia._ She might not have even heard of the tragedy in Palmacosta, or the capsize of Aifread's beloved ship. He wondered what he would say to her if he saw her again. Probably nothing of this whole affair.

With a small jolt that sent his brow furrowing over his closed eyes, he realized he'd forgotten her name.

 


	5. Days 15-19

They happened upon the second ship just as the spoils from the first ran out. The lookout, who had surprisingly not yet been murdered in his sleep by the tattooed rigger and his cabal, was the first to spy it lingering in the distance. It was with joy that he cried he had spotted something, but he knew better than to mistake it for land. At this ill hour, everyone knew better than to mistake anything for land.

Renewed by the hope of finding valuable resources, the oars of the  _Serpent_  swept out into the water, pushing the ship along the dull, still surface toward the other craft. Again, the first mate was at the helm, encouraging the boat forward, hand outthrust toward their goal. The captain himself was shut up in his cabin, as usual. He had vowed to take up the mantle of the navigator, and was never seen except behind a pile of charts and compasses, half buried in discarded routes and hopeless trajectories.

No one had the guts to tell him his efforts would be fruitless. They had all accepted, in some form or another, that land was far beyond their grasp. This sea was endless, and the best they could do was survive on the scraps of abandoned vessels. Their only joy was that there seemed to be a steady supply of forsaken ships asking for a looting.

The possibility of the  _Serpent_  as a ghost ship became more real in Aifread's head as they made their steady way toward their shadowy, bobbing quarry. The second ship's sails hung unfurled but there was no wind to carry it across the water, so it looked like a sulky, drooping thing, downtrodden and lost. It didn't seem like an inaccurate representation.

When the  _Serpent_ got close enough to the vessel, Aifread slid out his spyglass and peered through it. He saw the outline of the deck, the thick mainmast sprouting from its center, the curve of the intricate railings along its side. Like the  _Rosy Mariner_ , this vessel was obviously a passenger liner, but Aifread did not recognize its shape, nor the name splashed against its side:  _Waterbird_. The form of its sails and the odd curve of its belly told him it must've been a ship from the Thoda islands.

Thodan ships did not often sail in the narrow ocean between the two main continents, but it was possible that this one had happened to find itself in foreign waters when the calamity hit. Either that, or the  _Serpent_  had wandered off course, away from Luin, away from Palmacosta, into the tumultuous and dangerous waters of the far south. Or, equally probable, the entire world had turned into a landless hell and all ships from all countries were adrift on this lethal sea.

Aifread did not have time to meander through the metaphysical possibilities. A streak of dark movement caught his eye, and he saw something resembling a human figure running past the masthead. Before he could get a good view of it, it slipped into the shadows of the ship.

"I spotted something," Aifread said.

"I saw 'im too." Eric's voice was sudden, and very close, and Aifread glanced over to see the boy with his own spyglass, leaning over the water.

Another sailor pitched in. "Hell, I didn't see nothing, but I sure smelled it!"

"Aye, that ship reeks to hell and back."

The first mate stepped down among his complaining crew and took the spyglass from Eric. He narrowed his eye and stared down the long tube to the  _Waterbird_. "Could be the ship's not abandoned at all. I reckon they're preparing the cannons." He slid the spyglass closed and handed it back to Eric. "In that case, approach as usual."

"Er, sir," one of the gunners said. "We dumped all the shots. There ain't nothin' to feed the barrels."

A rare scowl crossed the first mate's face. "That's right. Well, approach with caution. Obviously there's at least  _something_  going on in there."

The  _Serpent_  slid across the water, oars dipping below the surface, guiding her to the bow of the other ship. The  _Waterbird_  didn't move, didn't rotate, showed no signs of personnel on the deck. When they approached close enough to board, they were met with no resistance. The first mate cautiously led the raiding crew onto the deck of the Thodan vessel, weapons raised, eyes alert, but found no one on deck. The awful smell of the ship flooded Aifread's nostrils, and his heart sank. Perhaps whatever stores of food the  _Waterbird_  had on board had already rotted. He hadn't thought of this possibility when he first suggested they take up the title of vulturous ghost ship.

The emptiness, stillness, and foul smell of the ship made everyone lower their weapons and cover their noses.

"Perhaps the bloke you saw was a trick of the light," the first mate suggested. "There ain't no human alive who can stand this stench."

"Maybe it's a dead one then, eh?" one man suggested.

"Either way, whether we're alone or not, get your duty done. Find as many supplies as you can. I'm going to see what happened to this damn thing." The first mate took off toward the captain's quarters, sheathing his cutlass and pulling his scarf up over his face to block the smell.

Eric followed Aifread across the deck. "You reckon it was the captain, going down with his ship?" he asked.

"This ship ain't going down." Aifread wished it would. Then maybe he could get this stench out of his nose. His hand wandered to his knife, but he did not see any sign of a threat as he descended the stairs into the hull.

The messdeck stank like all hell. Aifread was sure whatever barrels he would find were no doubt already rotten. But there was something very distinct about this particular stench that made him doubt it was merely spoiled food. There were all sorts of heinous smells on any ship, active or not, but this one was a different. Perhaps it was a combination of all the stenches of decay that filled his nose and told his feet to carry him back up onto deck and run, run far away.

Eric veered off into the shadows, in search of supplies. The smell didn't seem to bother him as much as it did Aifread. Eric dove into the stores, shouting back every once in a while that he had found nothing.

Aifread continued across the messdeck. Empty bowls, broken plates, upturned chairs, smashed barrels… it looked like there had been a fight at some point, perhaps over the remaining food. Maybe the crew all killed each other over the supplies and they had rotted, untouched, only because no one had emerged from that fight alive.

Aifread stopped in his tracks when he approached the table at the far end of the deck. His foot touched something soft, and he didn't dare look down. He swallowed hard, trying to keep down what little food sat in his stomach. He covered his nose and drew his knife. "Shit," he muttered, apparently loud enough for Eric to hear.

"Did you find the captain?" he joked, stumbling through the darkness toward Aifread.

"Oh, I found him all right."

Eric skidded to a halt beside Aifread and swore.

Across the table, stained a dark reddish brown, lay the captain, hat still adorning his unmoving head. The rest of his attire lay in tatters, ripped open from neck to belly. Beneath the severed fibers, the captain's skin was red and dry, caked in blood. Aifread kept his eyes from wandering too far—to where the skin ended and the bones began. The smell almost knocked him to the ground.

"Gods above… I'm gonna—"

Eric bent over, and behind his crumpled form Aifread saw a movement of shadow. He shoved Eric out of the way and jumped forward, brandishing his boarding axe, as a human figure rushed from the darkness.

A harrowing scream echoed across the messdeck and a crazed man, twitching and red-eyed, swung a rusty cutlass at Aifread. He jumped out of the way, backing up from the sailor's clumsy swings. Aifread could make out the man's bony figure, the stain of red around his mouth, the look in his eyes.

He backed up, drawing the man away from where Eric lay. The boy tried to haul himself up off the ground, but when he took a good look at the blood and limbs scattered on the floor, he just froze.

Aifread felt he needed to keep the hungry sailor away from the paralyzed young man, so he taunted him a little, twirling his axe in his hand. The sailor stumbled toward him, mouth wide, and Aifread parried and slid out of range. The man's swings were desperate and untrained, his body weak, his mind rotted. Aifread sidestepped as the rusted sword cleaved air, and swung his axe up below the man's chin.

The assailant's screams were cut short, and he released no sound but a wet gurgle as he fell to the floor. Aifread's stomach turned, and his hand shook even as he put his axe away and helped Eric up off the floor.

"Come on," he told the younger sailor. "There ain't nothing here for us."

Eric's legs seemed to stop working. Aifread had to practically drag him to the stairs leading from the messdeck.

Eric kept shaking, kept muttering to himself, but he found his footing again when they got to the stairs and ascended back into the air. The stench lessened a little when they emerged, but Aifread's nausea did not leave him.

"Oi!" he called to his fellows. They turned from their fruitless looting. "There ain't no supplies down there."

The first mate emerged, ship's log in hand. "Then what's that sm—"

"It's their goddamn swab. He ate the crew and left 'em in the messdeck. I struck him one in the face but there's no food left anyway. So let's get outta here."

"Martel help us," the first mate muttered. "All hands back to the  _Serpent_!"

A few more men spilled out from inside of the  _Waterbird_. "We saw 'em too! Three bodies, piled up by the guns."

A look crossed the first mate's face that everyone did their best to try not to emulate. They just shut their mouths and their noses and made their way back to the  _Serpent_ in a panicked silence. When they finally pulled the planks from between the ships and pushed off from the stinking passenger vessel, everyone took a deep breath. The air was by no means fresh, but at least it wasn't saturated with that awful stench.

Eric slid to his knees beside Aifread and heaved a sigh. "Looks like they beat us to the ghost ship punch," he said feebly.

"Aye." Aifread raised his eyes to the sky. If being the undead scourge of the seas entailed that sort of activity, he'd rather simply be a starving deckhand of the regular old  _Serpent._ He crossed his arms and slumped onto the deck, heart struggling to slow down.

He couldn't get that smell out of his nose.

*

The chantyman sat at the forecastle, strumming, humming quietly. Aifread stared out at the dark, inexplicable sky, and again sorted through all his past sins that might warrant a punishment such as this. He ignored the music.

"I swear to all the gods," the rigger started, when the chantyman struck up a familiar funeral dirge, "if you play one more chord of that goddamn song I will break your neck."

The man's fingers strummed across his instrument, and he smiled cynically.

This time around, no one stopped the rigger from leaping forward and wrapping his hands around the chantyman's neck. Aifread sat up, pushing himself off the floor of the deck, raising his head, mostly to see if anyone else would interfere. But they all sat, too exhausted to waste time keeping peace, as the rigger threw the smaller man to the floor and straddled him, wrapping his hands around his neck.

The chantyman tried his best. He broke his lute over the rigger's shoulder, wood splintering, strings snapping. When that didn't get the tattooed man off him, he grabbed one of the long wooden pieces and struck at his face, his arms, anywhere he could manage. The rigger was not deterred. He just took the blows in stride, squeezing tighter and tighter, until the chantyman stopped moving.

The rest of the crew approached only after the rigger raised himself off the chantyman, clenching his fists, panting. They feebly pulled him up, wrapping their arms around his, tugging him away from the twitching body. He let them—his work was done.

A few long gashes glinted red on his arms, and one large splinter protruded from his shoulder, dripping blood. "You'd better get the doctor to look at that," one of the other men said.

The rigger just nodded silently and turned away, cracking his knuckles. He seemed unperturbed by his injuries—these cuts, like all of his previous ones, would turn into nothing but scars. Nevertheless, he agreed that he should probably go get the wood lodged in his shoulder removed.

The first mate emerged from belowdecks just in time to see the rigger slink away into the shadows, and he clutched his hat angrily. "What is the meaning of this?" he hissed, and the crew backed off a little.

"We tried to stop him," one man said.

"Yeah, but you know him. All muscle, no brain. We couldn't pull him off in time."

The first mate looked down at the chantyman's body, and his brow furrowed. He glanced back up at the crew, all their eyes locked onto the chantyman.

Aifread couldn't say he did not think the same thing that was running through everyone else's head at that moment. Meat was meat—it would've been nothing but frugal.

But the first mate would have none of it. Aifread helped him carry the chantyman's body over to the side of the ship. A large part of him was thankful that they'd been commanded to dispose of the body. Even at the risk of starvation, he did not want to be there when the  _Serpent_  descended into the same sort of bedlam as the  _Waterbird_  no doubt had. He didn't want to see any of the crew turn into the man he'd seen in the messdeck of that cursed ship.

No one needed to say anything. Aifread assumed they thought the same as he did—it wasn't hard to see the fearful, desperate looks cross their faces. But their collective inner turbulence disappeared when the chantyman's body hit the water. It was too late for them to rethink their decision when the body was lost to them, wasted, sinking into the open mouth of the sea.


	6. Days 20-23

Aifread opened the letters. There was little else to do.

The _Serpent_ floated along the dead water, adrift, aimless. The thick air seemed to get hotter with every day, and more than a few men did nothing but lay down on the deck and try their best to breathe. There were no chanties to listen to, there was nothing to eat or drink, there was no work to be done. There was no point.

So Aifread sat belowdecks, where the oppressive heat relented just a little, and sorted through his letters. He lay an envelope on his lap and opened it up.

The captain had died earlier that day. No one had seen him for a while, figuring he was trying his best to get them back on course. In the end, it didn't matter much, since even if he'd managed to find out where they were and where they should go, they had no wind in their sails, no strength to row, no food to sustain them. It would almost be worse if they knew where they were going; it would've only been an insult. To die with land close to their grasps struck Aifread as simply unmanly.

He pulled out the first letter and skimmed its contents.

_My dearest, my divine_

They had made the first mate the captain before they even dumped the body. Usually there was at least some sort of pomp when it came to promotions—after all, even pirates occasionally like ceremony. It was also a great excuse for them to relax and drink for a while. Unfortunately, there was nothing with which to toast the first mate. He didn't seem to mind. He had already settled into the mantle of leader a while ago, acting as the adhesive that kept the crew together and the oil that kept the operations running smoothly. Even now, above deck, no doubt trying to pull his men out of this slump, he was probably wearing a stern smile.

_How I long to see your face again. I long to stare into your eyes and hold you in my arms._

It wasn't like the captain's death had come as a surprise. He'd been the oldest and no doubt frailest of the crew, so they should've been a little more bewildered that he'd survived as long as he did. He had been like a father to many of them, or so Aifread had heard. He'd joined the crew on one of its later—and last, he realized with a jolt—voyages. He did not know the history of this ship or her crew.

_Included with this letter is the 400 gald you asked of me. I have hidden it in the creases of the accompanying envelope to keep it unseen. I wait with bated breath to see you again, my love._

Aifread remembered that specific envelope, with a few gold coins nestled in folds of blank paper. It had been one of her only contributions to have made it all the way from her hands to his, and he had spent it on some of the finest wine he'd ever had.

He set the letter aside and picked up the next one. The professions of affection were much the same as in the last one.

_I wait daily at the dock to see your dark sails on the horizon. I have not seen you for months, and sometimes I stare into the water and whisper your name, as if that will bring you back to me. I can only hope you are heading this way, for I long to hear you whisper mine._

Aifread scrunched his lip. He had always had a mind more for numbers than names. He could probably account for all the gald and gifts she'd sent him over the years, but for the life of him he couldn't recall her name. He skipped down the page and his eyes settled at the bottom, where she signed.

_With all my love and affection,_

_Your devoted_

Devoted. Perhaps her name really was "Devoted." He opened the next one.

_I have resolved to write you once a week. I know how difficult it must be for you to send letters from whatever corner of the world you_ _'_ _re in, so I can at least hope that mine will find you, wherever you are. You do not need to write me back_ _—_ _I understand. I only ask that when you get back to Izoold, you_ _'_ _ll hold me tight and say my name._

Gods, this woman and her names. Aifread would be happy to—happy to get to any land at all, even if it was Izoold, and hold her, say her name. As long as it meant he got to live. He skipped the rest of the letter to look for her signature at the bottom.

_Sincerely,_

_Your beloved_

Aifread sighed.

He searched on, opening letter after letter.

_I remember the first time you called me your sea-dove. I remember_

Aifread didn't remember.

_All I want from you is to see you again, to spy your sails on the horizon._

She probably knew his sails better than he did. But it was all for nothing, at this point. He would never return to Izoold, on his ship or any. How he would give anything to just see the terrible, dingy town, rotting and disgusting, on the horizon.

_Then you can say my_

She always wanted him to say her name. But she never told him her name. She never signed with it. How was he supposed to know? Was he supposed to guess?

_With all my love_ ,

_Your little sea-dove_

He searched through the next letter, and the next, looking for her signature, any indication that she had a name at all, but he found only nicknames, pet names, descriptions, and one just sighed by "you know who!" followed by a cartoon heart. It was as if she was taunting him with her anonymity, Perhaps if he could say her name, just once, just remember what the hell it was, he would find himself back on land, back in her arms.

_Gods above_ , he thought. _If I survive this_ _…_ _I will write her back. Hell, I_ _'_ _ll go back to Izoold and say her name. Whatever it is._

Aifread sorted through letter after letter, skipping the contents and glancing only to the bottom, where her name should be. He never found it. When he had jumped through all the letters, he replaced them on his lap and shuffled them, reading through them again. He still found no indication of what he would call her if he ever made it back to land.

He started making promises. He told the old gods if he lived long enough to come across a pen and paper, he would return her letters, providing a reply for each one she wrote. He promised the spirits that he would even return all the money she had sent him—it hurt him to make that vow, but as the first mate had said, "Better poor and alive than rich and dead."

Martel is the one he'd implored the most. He didn't know why, it just seemed like this whole fiasco was somehow her fault. She must've been involved, if the navigator, her devoted worshipper, had concluded as such. So Aifread got on his knees (on his _knees_ before the gods—if only his mother could see him now, she'd cry with joy), and begged Martel to live. He told her if he found land again in one piece, he'd rush to his woman's arms, and love her the same way she said she loved him. He would become a loving husband, a wonderful father. He would give up on all this piracy, he would give up on sailing altogether—well, maybe not _altogether_ —if he wanted to support his family in Izoold he'd have to be some sort of fisherman or sailor. Yes—Martel might like that: if he lived, he wouldn't only give up on piracy, he'd become a do-gooder of the seas. That would satisfy the goddess; he'd help whoever needed it and not complain once.

Yes. He wouldn't complain once. He wouldn't be able to, since no matter how life got, he'd know it couldn't be as bad as this.

*

"Where'd the doctor go?" one man asked. "He should be here."

Aifread and two other sailors stood around the moaning rigger, lying on his hammock and twisting in pain. Aifread didn't know how a man who, like the rest of the crew, had not drunk anything for days could sweat so much. The floor below him was soaked, his skin was dry and green, his eyes glazed over.

"I don't know where the doctor went. There are a few boys missing all of a sudden."

"Eric says he saw one of the gunners jump into the water last night."

"So you think the doctor went that way, too?"

"Makes sense," Aifread put in. "Every man wants to go on his own terms, you know?"

"Aye, but now we've got this bastard all moanin' and spewing that green pus everywhere, and what're we gonna do about it?"

Aifread frowned. He was about to suggest that they let the rigger die on his own, shut him in the brig until he stopped moving. He considered telling them they should do him the kindness of putting him out of his own misery and throwing him overboard. But he had made more than one recent promise to Martel that necessitated him being kind.

_Hey, you, up there_ , he thought, directing his inner words toward the sky. _If I live, I_ _'_ _ll be real, real kind to this rigger._ Aifread figured the reverse must be true, then—that if he took time to act kindly toward the dying man, then he would live. It seemed simple enough to him.

"One of you go see what the doctor left behind," he told one of them. "If we can't heal him then we'll at least dull the pain."

"Don't you think the medicine is better used on a man who has a chance of living?" the man replied.

"None of us have a chance of living," Aifread told him. _Except for me, because I made some deals with the higher-ups._ He wasn't even sure if he meant it. But it did get the two men to leave him alone with the rigger.

The tattooed man turned from side to side, groaning, and Aifread sat across from him and stared. He wasn't sure where he should start. Should he lay a hand on the man's shoulder and tell him all was going to be all right? Should he start bleeding him in the hopes that he might manage to get out the infection in his blood? Should he just sit here, staring?

Aifread folded his hands and looked at the rigger. His shoulder, where the splinter had gone in, had swelled to ludicrous proportions. His skin was red and inflamed, the cuts on his arms oozed something thick and greenish.

And the doctor had said nothing about it. He had just disappeared suddenly, leaving the crew to take care of the ailing man. Aifread scratched his ear.

"So… I guess we can say the chantyman got you good," he said. "I never woulda guessed he was a dirty fighter."

The rigger's eyes twitched but didn't open.

"Shit, I ain't never seen a fight where both men didn't come out alive. First time for me."

He wasn't sure if he was making the rigger feel any better about his situation, or if the man could even hear him. He just didn't know what else to say.

He nearly sighed with relief when the other men came in with a few bottles of mysterious liquid, crushed herbs, and a serrated saw blade.

"The hell is the saw for?" Aifread asked.

"You know, in case we gotta cut off his arm."

"Yeah," piped the other. "The doctor had to do it once to old Samuel."

"May that bastard rest in peace."

Aifread made a face and took a few of the herbs and bottles from the men. He looked through them, searching for anything he recognized. He was one of the few men aboard who could read at all, so it was only natural that they gave him the task of sorting through what the doctor had left behind.

"I think… aw hell, I don't know, but this might help," he said, opening a bottle. A thick, sharp smell wafted from the neck. "I dunno. Give it to him."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

"Okay, we'll see how this goes."

One of the men pried the sleeping rigger's mouth open and poured the acrid mixture inside.

"Hold on, you moron, not _all_ of it," Aifread said, but too late.

The rigger spit, sputtered, and opened his eyes. He sat up, twitching, a confused and furious look on his face. He might have been suffering from delirium, but he was apparently coherent enough to recognize his two shipmates.

He spat. "Get out. Get out or I'll… kill you both."

Aifread followed his fellow sailors back out onto the deck.

So much for kindness.


	7. Days 24-2?

Hours before the rigger died of his infection (or, perhaps, an unintentional overdose of medicine, courtesy of his ignorant shipmates), he told Aifread an interesting story. It was disjointed and half-nonsensical, but through the hoarseness of his voice and the stuttering of his fevered lips, Aifread could recognize a tale in there somewhere. It wasn't until after the rigger stopped breathing and his body went limp that Aifread was able to piece together the narrative.

He'd had a daughter. Years ago, when he was a younger man, when there was still some unmarked skin on his body, he'd found a lover and fathered a child. Apparently it was wholly accidental. He hadn't known he was even a father until his woman showed up on the docks, baby in arms, insisting it was his.

So he married the damn woman. He hadn't even remembered meeting her, much less impregnating her, but she was the daughter of a wealthy man, so it wasn't the worst thing that had happened to him. Her father was a traditional gentleman, and only accepted him as a son-in-law to save his daughter from what he often referred to as "her greatest shame."

The rigger didn't care. He started finding himself in fancier clothing, spending more time on land, pilfering a valuable trinket or stack of gald where he could. He raided his father-in-law's stores, stealing precious metals, jewels, weapons, or anything he could get his hands on. But never enough to raise the father's suspicions enough to kick him out of the house.

It had been a good time for the rigger. He had a wife, a daughter, a chandelier, a foyer… he had enough money to eat, to drink, and best of all, to gamble. He had always told himself that this wealth, this comfort, was the reason he'd taken up privateering in the first place. His goal, his desires, all revolved around sustaining himself. And here, after accepting this woman and confronting her family, he found himself knee deep in money. He had everything he wanted.

He had to go back to the sea. He had no other recourse. He told Aifread, in gasping, stuttering breaths, that he couldn't stand wealth. He couldn't stand the dinners, the balls, the heavy purses, the stifling clothes, his family.

So he pulled on his boots and coat and left in the early hours of the morning. Before the sun rose he was on the deck of the _Serpent_ , far out to sea. He never saw his wife again after that.

But he did see his daughter. Years after, he spied her at the harbor, skirts hiked up past her knees, dancing drunk among the sailors. He had watched her for hours, surer with each passing minute she was the baby he'd held in his arms so many years ago.

He knew he should've picked her up and carried her back to her house, to her mother, to her wealth and safety and her warm bed. He should've knocked her out and dragged her back home, back into the foyer under the chandelier, taken her up the stairs and to her own room filled with toys and children's books and a rocking horse adorned with real horse hair—he should've thrown her at the feet of her overprotective grandfather and demanded she be locked inside from then on.

But he didn't. She got drunker through the night, rowdier, more touchy. He just sat and watched her, thankful only that she did not make her way over to him and sit in his lap. She had thrown her arms around one of the rigger's shipmates and let herself be carried back out into the street, away from the bar, away from the light.

And the rigger had just turned back to his ale and drank.

The regret of that decision stayed on his mind, on his breath, as he died.

When Aifread fetched the other sailors to help him carry the rigger's body up top, he could not help but think the gods were punishing him. They were punishing him for having the audacity to think he could make deals with them.

He had been kind to the rigger—at least he _thought_ he had—and he'd been rewarded with nothing but a sad, disjointed tale and another passing.

Perhaps he was making the wrong kind of deals.

*

Aifread didn't know how many of them were left, but at this juncture he wasn't sure if it was even worth it to find out. He just leaned on a barrel and stared out into the endless purple ocean, windless and silent. No one was willing to hoist the sails, to go down and sweat at the oars. All they could do now was float on, hoping that either they would cross land, another well-stocked ship, or at least die quickly.

The heat beat down on Aifread, and he couldn't hold himself up anymore. He slid down on his knees, staring at the sea between the planks in the deck's railing, and sighed. The first mate—Aifread had to correct himself: captain—walked from bow to stern and back again, telling the men to never give into despair, to keep going. It was what had kept them alive this far, after all.

Aifread didn't know how the young captain managed to walk from one end of the ship to the other, much less keep the speeches rolling. Aifread himself hadn't had anything to drink that day, so he could barely open his mouth at all. Either the captain had some sort of wellspring he was keeping a secret, or he was invincible.

His encouraging words blurred in the thick air, obscured by the heat. The only thing Aifread could hear after a few hours was the stinging billowing of the miasmic clouds above him. He swore he could _hear_ the damn calamity, whatever it was.

He might've been hearing nothing. He might've been lost in his own mind the way the _Serpent_ was lost at sea. Perhaps he was going insane, infected with whatever germ had crawled into the blood of the unlucky rigger.

He had checked himself for cuts, for open skin, to see if any of the rigger's infected flesh touched his own where it was vulnerable. He couldn't remember. For all he knew, he could be in bed right now, another man standing over him and shoving herbs down his throat. Maybe it was just the heat. Maybe it was nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

Wasn't that a thought?

*

The first mate died of sunstroke. No, he was the captain. The second captain the _Serpent_ had had in a week, and he died much like the first. Few people noticed him gone.

They didn't even bother to throw his body off the side of the boat. But as far as Aifread could tell, no one bothered eating the bastard either. It was too much to ask to haul oneself off the hot, heavy wood, even for the promise of food.

_Martel, Martel_ , Aifread said in his head, looking up to the windless purple sky. _If I survive this, I promise, I promise I_ _'_ _ll go back to Izoold. I_ _'_ _ll write that woman so many letters she_ _'_ _ll drown in them. I_ _'_ _ll hold her and say her name, shit, I_ _'_ _ll marry her. I_ _'_ _ll marry her and be the best husband_ _—_ _father_ _—_ _I_ _'_ _ll become a goddamn father if you want me to. I_ _'_ _ll give up piracy for good. I_ _'_ _ll go around sinking pirate ships and making sure everyone arrives safely from one end of the sea to the other. Hell, I_ _'_ _ll give my money away, I_ _'_ _ll be kind, I_ _'_ _ll be honest and trustworthy. I_ _'_ _ll go to your church every day and kiss the feet of your statue. I swear to you, if I live I_ _'_ _ll become everything I_ _'_ _m not, I swear, if I live_ _…_

The only one listening seemed to be the endless, silent ocean. And even then it didn't answer.


	8. Day ?

Aifread knew he had no right to still be alive. He had been pleading with Martel for hours now—hours, days, weeks. If only the bitch would listen. He had offered so much. He had offered his money, his time, his soul.

He supposed now might be a good time to prepare to meet her. He could ask her why she never listened, why she remained silent for so many years, why she saw fit to destroy the world and condemn the seas to rot. If there was any part of the wide world that deserved mercy, it was the ocean. When Aifread met Martel after he drew his final breath, he would argue on its behalf—and, he realized, his own.

The thought struck him that he probably would never actually meet Martel after he died. If there was somewhere he was going, he was fairly sure it was straight down, straight through the bottomless ocean and into the abyss beyond. That was, of course, provided the priests of Martel were correct about the afterlife.

The old lore of Palmacosta told a different story. For as long as Aifread could remember, sailors talked about death being something a little less dramatic. The sailors a generation before Aifread told him of death, told him of what their parents had told them, their grandparents told their parents, and so on. It seemed the lore had been around since before Palmacosta was a city, before it was even a small settlement on the far reaches of the forgotten southern continent.

Death was supposed to be an island. It was supposed to be something peaceful, something impartial. The island did not discriminate, didn't make judgements about the character and mistakes of the men and women who washed up on its shores.

At this point Aifread would be grateful for land in any form. Island, mainland, afterlife. As long as he could feel the solid ground under his feet, he would be fine. He would accept whatever came after that.

He opened his eyes, slowly, and gazed through the purple haze. He couldn't feel himself anymore, couldn't feel his stomach, the aches in his muscles and bones. He couldn't tell if it was day or night—all he saw was the slouched form of Eric, leaning against the mainmast. He sat with his head down, his arms limp at his sides.

Shakily, Aifread said his name, and he lifted his head. Aifread didn't know if anyone else on the ship was alive.

He wondered what Eric thought. He wondered what the boy had learned about the nature of the afterlife, whether he believed in heavenly retribution after death, or if all souls made their way to the same final resting place. Maybe Eric was of the uncommon creed that everyone got their own private islands, or washed up to find only family and friends inhabiting the place. Maybe Eric believed in hell. Aifread saw no point in  _not_ asking him. They were headed to one place or another anyway.

"Eric." Too tired to get his words straight, Aifread asked, "Is hell an island?"

"Yes."

The answer was unequivocal.

*

In his mind, words and equations appeared, meaningless.

Indolence fell like purple snow to eat the words, the letters, the names, and there were only shapes. Lazy, protean, dark, they drummed themselves up from a place in Aifread's own brain he could not know, could not control.

There was the face of the woman from Izoold, pale beneath her reddish hair, subtracted against the purple sky. There were no swirling clouds to shape her image; there was no movement, there was no change. There was only the strange, still miasma, too mundane to disturb Aifread's mind into complete awareness. When her face disappeared, the dead rigger's moved in, green with sickness, then the man in the mess deck, mouth caked in red, then the navigator's, then the captain's then Eric's then the woman's thenEric'sthenhisownthen—

The faces disappeared into purple. Aifread realized how dry his mouth was, but he couldn't open his eyes. He knew there was water all around him, somehow, _somehow_ , but he could not find it.

Endlessness, wilderness, eternity, permanence. If wind brought movement and change, and there was no wind here, he must be stuck in a state of permanence, of eternal monotony. He was already dead. It was that obvious.

*

Aifread did not know why he was being shaken. Why Eric's voice burst into his stifled hearing, why it was so full of energy. Perhaps they had crossed over to the other side and were now receiving their new bodies, as the church would say.

"Aifread! Land!"

Aifread didn't bother looking. "No."

"I see it. I see it just over there."

"Just another ghost ship."

"No, look!"

Eric's voice, rejuvenated with something akin to hope, forced Aifread's eyes open. He turned his body, aches and pains running through him. He half expected his bones to break at the effort, but he lifted himself high enough to see over the side of the ship. He squinted at the smear of darkness on the horizon, and blinked. He pulled himself to his knees, rubbing his eyes.

That wasn't a spit of rock, nor a ship. It wasn't a shadow on the water. Aifread's eyes widened, dry and caky. He leaned over the railing, staring at the expanse of mountain stretching out before him. His legs went weak. He recognized those hills.

"See if anyone's up for rowing," Aifread told Eric. He felt the last of his strength run through him, and he managed to stand, muscles burning, back aching. His throat was tight and dry, his voice barely functioning, but he called across the ship, to see which crumpled forms might arise at the prospect of touching land.

Before Aifread could get the men rallied, something strong, like a ghostly breath, pushed at his back. He looked toward the sky to see the purple haze retreat in a wave of billowing clouds, leaving only a glowing blue. Aifread's heart stopped in his chest, as the normal, comforting white puffs of cloud replaced the death-bringing purple.

The sea lightened, the deep, dismal violet gave way to its usual blue, and the water shone with energy and life. Something tickled Aifread's hair, the feather on his hat—he almost turned to see the culprit, but then he realized it was wind.

Wind. He never thought he's feel it again. It almost felt alien to him, to feel his skin and hair moved and tickled by something that he would never see. He stood, mouth agape, at the blue sky, so full of movement and light. The sea below him swelled, and he nearly fell to his knees.

Something inexplicable, something beyond the blue sky and the rolling sea, beyond the return of the sun and the wind, touched Aifread. He couldn't place the feeling—but it was physical—a rush of some sort of power, some sort of life, straight through his heart and bones, from the sky to the sea and back again. Something about this new sky, this sea, was different. Different, and invigorating.

"Go find anyone able to get the sails unfurled," he commanded Eric. The boy nodded and rushed off, legs shaking, breath weak and ragged. Aifread turned again to the sea and the distant mountains rising up against the sun.

He realized it should've struck him that Martel had come through for him, but all he felt was relief that she was no longer in the picture. He would not need her help from now on, not with this new wind in his sails.

Besides, why should he keep promises to a god that made him suffer so much? That killed many of the crew, and many others on land and at sea? Why should he lower himself to make a deal with a goddess that inhumane? No, he would continue to survive and conceive his moralities on his own.

Aifread grinned, and looked to the horizon. He absentmindedly reached into his breast pocket and brought out the letters, the meaningless words and wasted sentiment. He closed his eyes lazily, feeling the wind on his skin, as he tore them to pieces and threw them into the sea.


End file.
